Spare time is a funny thing. The older I get, the more it resembles a cryptid — something people claim exists, but that I rarely see for myself. Between work, life, and the thousand small obligations that seem to multiply when you’re not looking, genuinely free time has become the rarest of luxuries.

Which makes it all the more important that when I do get some, I spend it badly.

By “badly,” I mean glued to a screen with a cup of tea going cold beside me, utterly absorbed in something that serves no practical purpose whatsoever. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The PC/Mac Rabbit Holes

My go-to games on the computer tend to fall into a particular category: the kind where you sit down at nine in the evening fully intending to have a quick go, and then look up to find it’s two in the morning and you’ve achieved something either magnificent or completely inexplicable.

The Football Manager franchise has been my longest-running obsession, and my proudest achievement in it belongs to a save in FM24: I took Kings Lynn Town — yes, that Kings Lynn Town — and after fifteen years of grinding through the non-leagues, clawing up through the divisions, and surviving the kind of managerial pressure that would break lesser virtual men, I led them to Champions League glory. Fifteen years. European champions. I’d love to say it felt surreal, but honestly it felt earned.

(We never did win the Premier League. That one still stings.)

In FM26 I’ve taken a different path entirely — I’m currently managing Huddinge IF in the Swedish second tier, having earned promotion after two seasons. Less glamorous than Wembley, perhaps, but there’s something deeply satisfying about building something from scratch in a league where nobody’s expecting anything from you.

Transport Fever 2 is where my inner civil engineer goes to live his best life. I have a map that has grown over time into something that can only be described as organised chaos. The rail network in particular is a magnificent, sprawling spaghetti of tracks and junctions and overlapping lines that somehow — somehow — continues to function. Every time I add a new route I half-expect the whole thing to collapse. It never does. I take this as a sign that I’m either a genius or just very lucky.

Cities: Skylines has become something of an artistic exercise. I’m building a British city — and I mean properly British — row after row of terraced houses, each one individually placed. There are thousands of them. Actual thousands. Why would I do this to myself? Because it looks right, that’s why. Because when you zoom out and you see those long, slightly cramped Victorian streets stretching off into the distance, it looks like somewhere that could genuinely exist. It looks like home. Worth every obsessive hour.

And then there’s Civilisation. Just one more turn, you tell yourself. Just one more. It’s such a small, reasonable thing to ask. One more turn to finish that wonder. One more to see off the Aztecs. One more to find out what’s on the other side of that mountain range. But the turns keep coming, and the night keeps deepening, and somewhere around the Industrial Age you realise that the birds have started singing outside and a grey dawn is bleeding through the curtains and you are still — still — not done. Time doesn’t pass when you’re playing Civilisation. It dissolves. I have lost whole nights to it without a moment’s regret, blinking back into reality somewhere around sunrise, bleary and vaguely triumphant. It is, without question, the most dangerous game ever made.

On the PS5

My console time is split between two very different worlds. F1 scratches the racing itch — there’s something deeply satisfying about the precision of it, the incremental improvements, the perfect lap that somehow comes together.

But the game that genuinely got under my skin — especially during lockdown — is Life Is Strange. I stumbled into the franchise during those strange, suspended months when the world was standing still, and I fell completely into it. The story of Max Caulfield and Chloe Price hit me harder than I expected. It’s the kind of game that asks you to sit with your choices, that makes consequences feel real, that has actual emotional weight. For something that technically involves a teenager rewinding time, it manages to be remarkably human.

I’ve played through the franchise since, and while Max and Chloe remain the heart of it for me, every chapter in the series has something to say about loneliness and connection and the weight of small decisions. Not bad for a video game.

Why It Matters

I know some people see gaming as a waste of time. I understand the argument, even if I disagree with it. There’s something about a well-made game — the kind that pulls you in and gives you a world to inhabit, problems to solve, stories to follow — that feels genuinely restorative to me. It’s creative engagement dressed up as entertainment.

Besides, Kings Lynn Town are European champions. If that’s a waste of time, I’ll take it.

So tell me — what are you playing right now? Are you a fellow victim of Civilisation’s “just one more turn” curse, or do you have your own Kings Lynn Town story waiting to be written? Drop a comment below and let me know. And if you’ve never tried any of the games above, consider this your warning: clear your schedule first.